I currently have a rog zephyrus g14, which has an amd apu and a discrete amd gpu in a 14" form factor. Would it be possible to make a mainboard with the size shrank such that a separate small pcie card, most often a gpu, can connect with the mainboard on its side (an internal vertical split) with the connector similar to the one in the Laptop 16? It doesn’t have to be a hot swap solution like in the laptop 16, more so a secondary board.
Obviously this would mean that the 2 usb c expansions removed, separate cooling systems, soldered dram and wifi/ble modules (and a cellular modem, which the laptop doesn’t have but i believe it needs), more power draw and a mux switch. I highly respect the upgradability approach of the framework laptop, but i think nowadays it is ok to ship non expandable ram as the performance relies more on the memory speed+bandwidth and ram is cheaper than ever.
This expansion would mostly be used for gpus, but it would also allow niche setups like ai inference accelerators (like the qualcomm card in the new dell pro max laptop), fpgas, radio modules, etc. Also, the smaller mainboard can be used in a mini pc like the mac mini.
I know this is a ton of engineering work that will make the laptop much more expensive for a niche use case, but a small production volume separate “pro” model with a lot of common components with the laptop 13 would be nice.